Experience Purangi: Team completes seven days of kokako surveys

The view of the project area. Photo/ Supplied

Kokako survey: The field season has certainly ramped up following the Covid-19 lockdown.

The team has just completed seven days of kokako surveys while dodging the spring weather, covering over 50km of tracks and ridgelines, and 1600ha of the Pouiatoa Conservation Area.

This was quite a successful year, with the team identifying 13 kokako and hearing at least another three birds.

There were five pairs identified with potentially another pair being located, and there are at least five unbanded kokako in the area. This is great news because it means they are some breeding pairs within the Pouiatoa and that the kokako chicks are surviving.

Operation Nest Egg: The trust is also working with Kiwis for kiwi and Ngāti Maru to do egg lifts from six male kiwi that were caught earlier this year and had transmitters attached.

The kiwi were caught on one of Ngāti Maru's blocks in Matau, and these birds have been named by kids from six local schools in the Inglewood community.

The kiwi are monitored every month to see whether they are incubating eggs.

The egg lift occurs when the male is about 60 days incubation, eggs hatch about 80 days, and really young eggs are difficult to incubate.

The eggs are taken to the Crombie Lockwood Kiwi Burrow where they will be artificially incubated and the chicks reared to 1kg body weight.

These chicks will then be released into Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari to increase the genetic diversity of this kiwi population.

Once the kiwi population within the fenced sanctuary grows, some of the adults will be translocated back to Taranaki into pest-free areas to help boost wild population numbers.

Experience Purangi is excited to be a part of this project helping kiwi conservation.